Capturing photos has become very popular in last few decades, particularly in view of the many capabilities made available to the user of digital cameras, such as the immediate and direct viewing of captured images, the ease by which said images are stored and sent over networks, such as cellular networks or the Internet, to be shared with friends and social communities. Such uses have become even more widespread since cameras have begun to be incorporated in cellular phones and other mobile communication devices. The cameras provided in the phones allow and even wider use by permitting to send MMS to other users and to think the captured images directly using Bluetooth-enabled printing devices.
Unfortunately captured pictures cannot always be crisp and bright, and sharp and focused at the same time. There are many physical restrictions to capturing quality photos, such as the amount of light available during the capture processing. Lack of lighting during the capturing causes the photos to suffer on one side from noise and darkness, and on the other side from blur and de-focus. This situation is very common when, for instance, users which to take pictures of outdoor scenery in the evening, or in indoor places with low illumination (like cafés, bars and theaters). Shooting parameters can in principle be adjusted to optimize the quality of the captured picture. There are two main parameters that allow such adjustment: exposure time and gain (digital/analog). However, increasing the gain will increase the noise level of the captured picture.
To complicate the situation, each individual camera user has his own preferences, which may differ from those of another user. For instance, one user likes sharp images with high noise, while in other will prefer low noise levels on blurred photo. Most modern cameras allow the user adjust shooting parameters before taking a picture, but this option is seldom exploited, and in fact is most users are not familiar with it and leave their cameras in the automatic mode, which has been preset in the factory and is the same for all users.
Modern cameras have many internal algorithms that define the camera capture processing. The user can choose between different capturing modes, and each mode has an automatic behavior which has been preset at the factory, but often the user can manually configure the behavior of these algorithms. However, manual configuration requires special professional knowledge (such as a deep understanding of the camera capture parameters and their results, such as Exposure time, Gain, Aperture, Focus, as well as a deep understanding of camera post processing: Digital Noise Reduction(DNR), Contrast enhancement, Edge enhancement, Gamma correction).
The art has so far failed to provide a user-friendly solution to this problem. There is therefore a need to provide digital imaging apparatus that overcomes the aforesaid disadvantages of existing cameras.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus which overcomes the above limitations of the prior art.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method and cameras using said method, which will allow the user to shoot pictures, within the range of possibilities of shooting parameters, which will more closely approach its preference for the resulting image.